Snippings

General Motors is planning to drop support for both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from new electric vehicles it plans to launch in the next few years. The decision won’t affect any GM vehicles already on the market, nor will it apply to gasoline- or diesel-powered GM vehicles in the coming years—just EVs.

GM wants to offer customers a more integrated solution that sees Google Maps, Google Assistant, Audible, Spotify, and other applications run natively on its Ultifi software platform.

 

I must admit, I’m rather taken aback by this decision. For starters, Apple CarPlay is wildly popular; Apple says 79 percent of new car buyers insist on this feature. While independent surveys don’t find quite this level of demand, a 2020 survey showed 48 percent of car buyers want CarPlay or Android Auto in their next vehicle.

From GM confirms it’s dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from 2024 EVs | Ars Technica:

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Ofcom will neither prescribe mitigations implemented by telcos in the way the US has, nor will they stipulate that calls must be blocked if they have not been authenticated, as is required by French law.

From UK Adopts New Rules to Stop CLI Spoofing but Not STIR/SHAKEN | Commsrisk:

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Privacy or good data practices are not something we can expect the market to produce, they also aren’t something that consumers can easily opt in or out of. Theorizing data’s competitive value in terms of a quality dimension equivalent to price is misleading. It misses the importance of structuring digital platform markets so that competition can reduce data and privacy concerns.

From Data, Context and Competition Policy – ProMarket:

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Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission proposed a new licensing framework in February, focusing on investor protection. A senior official said at a briefing that the regulator wanted to prevent a recurrence of the problems that brought down FTX, as well as other fraudulent behavior.

From Hong Kong’s Crypto Ambitions Get a Boost From U.S. Crackdown – WSJ:

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Behind Elon Musk’s gamble to turn Twitter Inc. into a company worth more than $250 billion is a beloved idea he has hung on to for more than two decades: digital banking.

The billionaire entrepreneur has talked in dribs and drabs about what Twitter 2.0 might ultimately look like under his control. But late last week, he gave employees a taste of how grandiose his plans are, telling them he envisions Twitter being worth more than 10 times its current value of around $20 billion.

Key to his effort, he has said, is putting the social-media company at the center of users’ financial lives.

From Elon Musk Revives Old Banking Dream in Pursuing $250 Billion Twitter Valuation – WSJ:

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“I think it’s possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world,” Mr. Musk said in March at a Morgan Stanley conference. 

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Amazon Sidewalk is only active in the U.S., so Apple’s Find My network works better than Tile abroad, because of the global prevalence of Apple devices. In Paris, where I tested the devices, the Find My network spotted the Chipolo card in a park within minutes. During this 30-minute remote field test, my Tile tracker never turned up in the Tile app.

From Track Your Lost Stuff: Apple’s Find My vs. Amazon Sidewalk – WSJ:

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Argentinian low-cost airline Flybondi is integrating Web3 into its ticketing process by issuing e-tickets as non-fungible tokens (NFT).
The new integration announced Thursday is called Ticket 3.0 and is an expansion of its existing relationship with NFT ticketing company TravelX, which launched in September 2022. The NFT ticketing technology, built on the Algorand blockchain, allows passengers to change their name, transfer or sell their “NFTickets” independently.

From NFTickets: Argentinian Airline Flybondi Issues Every Ticket as an NFT:

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“Almost anything of value can be tokenized and tokenization of financial and real-world assets could be the “killer use-case” blockchain needs to drive a breakthrough,” added the report. “We forecast $4 trillion to $5 trillion of tokenized digital securities and $1 trillion of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based trade finance volumes by 2030.”

From Tokenization of Assets Could Reach $5 trillion by 2030 – Markets Media.

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MONEY, TOKENS, AND GAMES

Blockchain’s Next Billion Users and Trillions in Value

Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions

March 2023

 

 

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But we believe we are approaching an inflection point, where the promised potential

of blockchain will be realized and be measured in billions of users and trillions of

dollars in value. Successful adoption will be when blockchain has a billion-plus

users who do not even realize they are using the technology. This is likely to be

driven by the adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by large central

banks as well as tokenized assets in gaming and blockchain-based payments on

social media. By 2030, up to $5 trillion of CBDCs could be circulating in major

economies in the world, half or which could be linked to distributed ledger

technology. Tokenization of financial and real-work assets could be the killer use

case driving blockchain breakthrough with tokenization expected to grow by a factor

of 80x in private markets and reach up to almost $4 trillion in value by 2030.

We first wrote about tokenization in the 2021 Citi GPS report Future of Money:

CBDCs, Crypto, and 21st Century Cash. At the time, China was starting to pilot test

its (CBDC) and other central banks were warming up to the idea of their own digital

currencies. In recent months, central banks in multiple large countries have

announced plans for CBDCs this decade, giving almost 2 billion people the

opportunity to experiment with digital currency.

To be successfully adopted into the mainstream, blockchain needs the help of

technology enablers, including (1) decentralized digital identities, (2) zeroknowledge proofs, (3) Oracles, and (4) secure bridges. The legal plumbing also

needs to be altered to enable smart legal contracts that will provide a whole new set

of rails for global commerce and finance to run on. Regulatory considerations are

also necessary to allow adoption and scalability without the hindering innovation. 

From .

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However, “Move Fast and Break Things!” cannot be the mantra driving agility for many organizations.

From Digital Economy Dispatch #125 — The SAFe Approach to Digital Transformation.

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